[Footnote 1321: Ibid., Stoeckl to F.O.,
Jan. 17-29, 1861. No. 267. He reports that
he has seen a confidential letter from Thouvenel to
Mercier outlining exactly his own ideas as to England
being the sole gainer by the dissolution of the Union.]

[Footnote 1322: For an analysis of this change
see The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy,
Vol II, p. 277, which also quotes a remarkable speech
by Disraeli.]

CHAPTER XVIII

THE KEY-NOTE OF BRITISH ATTITUDE

On May 8, 1865, the news was received in London of
Johnston’s surrender to Sherman. On that
same day there occurred in the Commons the first serious
debate in thirty-three years on a proposed expansion
of the electoral franchise. It was a dramatic
coincidence and no mere fortuitous one in the minds
of thoughtful Englishmen who had seen in the Civil
War a struggle as fateful in British domestic policy
as in that of America herself. Throughout all
British political agitation from the time of the American
revolution in 1776, there had run the thread of the
American “example” as argument to some
for imitation, to others for warning. Nearly
every British traveller in America, publishing his
impressions, felt compelled to report on American governmental
and political institutions, and did so from his preconceived
notions of what was desirable in his own country[1323].
In the ten years immediately preceding the Civil War
most travellers were laudatory of American democracy,
and one, the best in acute analysis up to the time
of Lord Bryce’s great work, had much influence
on that class in England which was discontented with
existing political institutions at home. This
was Mackay’s Western World which, first
published in 1849, had gone through four editions
in 1850 and in succeeding years was frequently reprinted[1324].
Republicanism, Mackay asserted, was no longer an experiment;
its success and permanence were evident in the mighty
power of the United States; Canada would soon follow
the American example; the “injustice”
of British aristocrats to the United States was intentional,
seeking to discredit democracy:

“... Englishmen are too
prone to mingle severity with their judgments
whenever the Republic is concerned. It is the
interest of aristocracy to exhibit republicanism,
where-ever it is found, in the worst possible
light, and the mass of the people have too long,
by pandering to their prejudice, aided them in
their object. They recognize America as the stronghold
of republicanism. If they can bring it into disrepute